By SHANNON O. WELLS
Another beginning of an academic year, another inaugural Senate Council meeting, right? This time, that’s not quite the case. The Sept. 14 shared governance forum added a new face and voice to its mix: Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel, who took Pitt’s leadership reins from former chancellor Patrick Gallagher in July
“It's really nice to see you all — and friends online. It's an absolute pleasure to be here,” Gabel said to the packed conference room at Posvar Hall. “I’m delighted what this means in terms of getting started and what this means in terms of how we do shared governance and work together. And I'm just really glad to be here.”
Asking “for some indulgence” in case she didn’t cover something that was hoped for, while welcoming feedback on her report, Gabel offered thanks to shared governance groups “who've already been big partners in several things … to think about or work on as we get started.”
Those things include the search for a new provost, which, she said, came with “lots of guidance” from students, faculty and staff “on the place and opportunities and some of the things that we know we can work on together. (I) really like how it's all going. I say that being in my ninth week, so there’s still lots to learn and lots to do.”
With that, Gabel launched into the meat of her report, including the following topics:
PROVOST AND DEAN SEARCHES
With the search process about to begin to fill the position left from former provost Ann Cudd’s departure, Gabel expressed appreciation to officers who have started the election process to form the search committee, and to Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for health science, who will chair the committee.
With a search consultant already retained and a position profile prepared, candidates will begin to be identified. “It's a full national search on campus — internal, external — will all be considered, and I'm very much looking forward to it,” Gabel said.
And while she “might have preferred a little more runway before we undertook a search of this importance to our entire community … I will say the listening process — even the informal listening that has happened (along with) all the listening sessions that we'll be scheduling and announcing soon — are super helpful.”
Pitt also has four open searches for deans, although the search for the School of Dental Medicine is winding down, and “We'll see some good announcements about that soon,” she said.
The goal is to have the next provost involved in evaluating the dean candidates for the schools of Education, Engineering and Law. “That will take a little fairy dust to get that sequence just right, but that's the goal,” Gabel said. “And we're hopeful that is the way that works.”
FALL KICKOFF AND SURVEY
Gabel said the 2023-24 first-year and transfer class is “large and historically diverse” and has brought a “very positive energy” around campus.
“I don't know if I speak for everybody, but this felt like a really nice fall kickoff in ways that we've gone several years without being able to enjoy,” she said, mentioning events like Lantern Night, the campus bonfire, graduate student picnic, and move-in day.
A survey link sent as part of Gabel’s welcome video drew 1,500 responses before it was closed, she said of the “non-scientific” questionnaire.
“We didn't want it to feel like anything other than a platform or some sort of preliminary conversation,” she said. “But a lot of very lovely things came over the transom, and some opportunities for improvement. … As you might imagine, there was a lot of pride from across a variety of stakeholders on where the University is, how it has evolved and its potential for the future as an institution.”
Gabel said she appreciated feedback on “what we really think about what it means to be excellent without losing sight of our grounding and our origins. It was hopeful, and sort of gave shape and texture to themes that had started to emerge” during her onboarding process.
The chancellor said she’s asking a similar set of questions in one-on-one meetings to help the administration "think about what this means for the next chapter of the strategic plan.”
PLAN FOR PITT
Gabel said the University’s current strategic plan was “developed through a very robust and meaningful shared governance process. But as one might expect, when one receives a strategic plan in this position, I want to see if there are things that I can add to it or reframe in it without in any way diminishing the work that's already in there.
“I think Plan for Pitt really shows a lot of the quality of the work we do, the aspirations — where we'd like to be — the strengths to where we are now, some of our challenges or opportunities,” she explained. “And now I think the time is for us to think about how we bring that so that we can story tell around it, so that we can make sure that it's tied to action in ways that we can measure and assess how we're doing.”
Many strategic plans in higher education share qualities and goals, Gabel said, including a commitment to students, research, inclusivity and “being good stewards of our resources and being accountable. Those should be in every plan.”
Plans should be based on thinking strategically about the institution “being its best self, but not a soulless institution.” Plans also consider the individual people that comprise the institution and all the different ways that people connect to the institution.
Strategic plans that are vibrant and meaningful and that naturally become a part of the way in which the work of the institution, and its community, happens, have “three legs of the stool,” she said. The plans should:
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Give the architecture for storytelling — elevator-speech style — and give a sense of where the university is going and where it's prioritizing, she said.
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Be inspiring in a reasonable and approachable way where you look at it and think, “OK, that's good work. I want to be a part of that.”
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Create a mechanism for accountability: “What are we trying to do? Are we getting there or not? If not, what are we going to do differently?”
With those three elements, Gabel said, “I think you start to see the plan take the shape of the specific institution that created it. That's what I think you'll see from me as I think about what's in … I guess it would be Plan for Pitt 3.0,” referring to the strategic plan’s third iteration.
Strategic plans also give the University permission to double down on what it’s good at, she said, “and I think this is really important in the times we find ourselves in, nationally, in higher education.” The plan also can give the University a chance to “take some moonshots, in the right proportion.”
“This is not a plan for how we are not ourselves and become something entirely new. This is a plan for how we become our best selves together and all the unique individual ways that we would go about doing that,” Gabel said, adding one of her favorite things about Plan for Pitt is that “it's 100% leaning into values. And I want to retain all of that as we think about what happens next.”
Gabel said she’ll discuss this vision during an information session later this month and have more face-to-face conversations focused on specific elements.
“I intend to do strategic plan-specific presentations with information provided in advance so that people can think about it and talk to their constituencies and get back to us,” she said, adding she will provide additional content at the Oct. 4 Faculty Assembly meeting and will talk to Staff Council about on Oct. 16.
ACC REALIGNMENT
“Some of you follow that very closely and some of you could care less,” Gabel said of the realignment of the Atlantic Coast Conference athletic league, which added Stanford and the University of California in the West Coast state and Southern Methodist University in Texas. “In the grand scheme, the way that things unfolded will change things only moderately at the University of Pittsburgh with a lot of attention to the student-athlete experience.
“But the effort in making a decision like that, across multiple institutions, … took a little time in these first few weeks with the outcome that I know you've all read about in the newspaper,” she added.
Later in the meeting, John Stoner, teaching professor in history, urged the chancellor to consider impacts on Pitt student-athletes who are — with the geographic expansion of the ACC conference — “now commuting to Silicon Valley (California), perhaps, to play, rather than Durham (N.C.).”
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Gabel said a Supreme Court decision earlier this summer that ended race-based admissions policies “fundamentally changes the way we do admissions, with some incredible work already happening by our admissions team in anticipation of that decision” that’s now “unfolding in real time.” This is accompanied by “a lot of analysis and consternation” about where else this may impact the work being done on Pitt’s campuses, and the parameters or limitations of that work,” Gabel said, noting the University’s continued “across-the-board” commitment to equity, inclusion and accessibility.
Senate Council president’s report
Senate President Robin Kear said the hybrid meeting option for Senate Council and Faculty Assembly will continue this year, although encouraged using Zoom “only when necessary. But it’s nice to have the accessibility option. It’s nice to see you in person as well. We have a really good group here.”
She reminded virtual attendees to not use the Zoom “chat” function, but to simply raise their hand to contribute to the conversation, “as not everyone in this room can see that discussion. We're asking anyone presenting information to do so in person,” she said.
Noting she’s been “off to a great start” working with Gabel and interim Provost Joe McCarthy, Kear went on to address the following topics:
Provost search committee: Kear referred to her “detailed account” on the search during the Sept. 6 Faculty Assembly meeting, adding that the nominating committee decided on slates on Sept. 12, which are now available to all faculty along with instructions on submitting a petition for candidacy that will be open for 10 days.
“So thank you to all those who have (decided to run), and thank you to the nominating committee for their brief but important role,” Kear said of the group comprising John Stoner and Dawn McCormick (arts and sciences), Matt Burton and Ben Bratman (professional schools), Alejandro Almarza and Tom Songer (health sciences) and Adam Cilli from the Greensburg campus (regional campuses).
On Sept. 26, those eligible to vote will receive a link via email notification. Faculty should only vote in their respective area, Kear noted. For each candidate listed, voters should click “approve” or “not approve,” while approving as many candidates as desired. There will be two representatives elected from arts & sciences, two from the professional schools, one from health sciences and one from the regional campuses.
Kear said the Senate Council office confirms the HR coding of any faculty member being considered for the slate and the coding for that faculty member is maintained at the unit level, noting that “the Senate office does not make that determination of eligibility on their own.”
University policy open for comment: Access to and Use of University Computing Resources is open for comment through Oct. 10. “This is a policy that was started in May of 2021,” Kear said, that will go through the Senate Computing and Information Technology Committee before coming through Faculty Assembly and Senate Council.
“Thank you all for your attention and your dedication to shared governance,” Kear said.
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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